Cannondale Pro Cycling will continue its Italian tour. Tomorrow, Saturday, September 20, the Green Machine will compete in the Memorial Marco Pantani. The race is in memoriam to Marco Pantani, the last cyclist to have won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in the same year. The 190 km race which starts and finishes in Cesenatico (Pantani's home town) is part of the UCI Tour Schedule. After a great performance at the Trittico Lombardo, with Elia Vivian's win, the team is looking forward for another solid race.

Team director Biagio Conte has selected eight athletes to compete. Team leaders include 2010 Memorial Marco Pantani race winner Elia Viviani, as well as Damiano Caruso and Davide Formolo who have both been selected by the Italian cycling team to compete at the World Championships in Ponferrada. The team captains will be supported by Marco Marcato, Davide Villella, Matthias Krizek, Guillaume Boivin and Juraj Sagan.

"The good shape showed by our captains in the last races is a positive signal in view of the Memorial Patani," said team director Conte. "The motivations of all the riders will be at the top and I expect they will exploit the chance to ride at their best. We have different solutions to try to win the race - I would like to see a united team able to support the best option we'll have."

A couple of teams have sent me press releases outlining their plans and hopes for the championships.

From Lampre-Merida, team of world champion Rui Costa:

Seven riders from Lampre-Merida will race on Ponferrada roads for the world championships (28 September - road race, 24 September - individual time trial) and at the start of the rainbow race there will be Rui Costa too.

Twelve months after his victory in Florence, Rui Costa will face the world championship at the end of the season during which he always raced as a strong champion. Together with Rui, in the Portuguese team there will be the Portuguese champion for road and time trial, Nelson Oliveira, who will take part in both disciplines.

Double participation in road and time trial race for Anacona too.
Niemiec will race again on Spanish roads some weeks after he conquered in Vuelta a beautiful victory in the Lagos de Covadonga stage. Maximiliano Richeze too raced in Vuelta and he's going to wear the Argentinian jersey in Ponferrada; Durasek and Polanc, on the contrary, will approach the world championship after having taken part in Gp Quebec, Gp Montreal and Tre Valli Varesine.

For the third consecutive year there’s a world championship team time trial for commercial teams. This event is programmed on the first day of the World Championships, on Sunday 21st of September. Each team lines up six riders. For Lotto Belisol it are Lars Bak, Vegard Breen, Adam Hansen, Greg Henderson, Pim Ligthart and Maxime Monfort.

The teams have to cover 57.1 kilometres. There are 386 altitude metres and two hills on the course. The first one is about halfway, the second one in the last kilometres.

Herman Frison, sports director: “It’s a very nice course with large roads with few turns. It gets tougher near the end. In the last ten kilometres it’s uphill. During the first recon there was a headwind, that makes it tougher. That last hill is pretty long and gets steeper by the top. It’s a course for strong men. This team time trial is possibly a bit tougher than last year, but definitely not much. Our riders want to get a place in top ten. That will be very difficult. There are really strong teams here. But they will give all they got; they are all really motivated. We have already achieved many goals this season, I hope this one as well.”

“During the recon it was 25 to 26 degrees, with not much wind. We had a little bit of rain. No rain is forecasted for Sunday. If it should rain, certain parts could be slippery.”